Over the Blue Mountains
Sunset over my new car
We traveled over the Blue Mountains for the first time in August.
On the way, we stopped at the dealer to pickup my new car - see previous post. It really handles well and has good power even fully loaded.
We traveled on The Bells Line of Road - a more scenic route, and we were told less road construction. In the mountains there were many apple orchards. There were also several roadside stands with fresh apple pie. The pie was delicious.
The country is very different to what we see along the coast. Open spaces. Wild kangaroo and wallaby. It was the first time we had seen wild kangaroo. We also saw many dead wombat on the side of the road. I had no idea they were so large.
The Blue Gum cabin.
Countryside
The cabin we stayed in,
The Blue Gum, was wonderful. It had a really nice wood stove and plenty of wood, which kept the main area toasty. There was frost overnight. The bathroom had a whirlpool tub and a modern composting toilet. Zoe was freaked out by the toilet.
At night, we could see many details of the Milky Way. The sky was so vast and clear. Amazing!
Countryside
Sofala is a sleepy little town - but the tavern was doing a brisk business
Above - Tristan's gold spec and Chris our teacher.
We went gold panning while there. We hired an amateur geologist to teach us how. Dave and I got into it. Tristan found the largest spec of gold. I even found a few specs of platinum. The kids lost interest after a while but went down the creek to build dams.
We enjoyed our overnight in the country.
